The Girl at Danes' Dyke - Margaret Rome

by Margaret Rome

  'Britt and Janice will think you've gone completely mad,' was all the protest she allowed herself.

  He stopped, peering through the gloom of a darkened passageway to seek the source of the dejected voice. She sensed his grin and longing swamped her, a longing to be the object of his search, a terrible, sweet yearning to know the ecstasy of becoming his wife, a desire to protect him from the rejection that was bound to follow any attempt to woo modern woman in the manner of his lusty Viking ancestors.

  'Do you know, I think perhaps lama, little mad,' he teased through the darkness.

  Some instinct caused her to tense, but too late! He scooped her slight body high .into his arms, hitched one leg across the banister and began sliding down the staircase. Alarm and delight-rioted in her veins as she clung to him, panic-stricken yet conversely, unafraid. Breathless with laughter, 'he' deposited her in the hallway, still retaining his grip on her waist while wickedly he reminded her, 'The lunatic and the lover, my dear, are of imagination all compact!'

  CHAPTER NINE

  Britt and Janice were in the sitting-room sipping pre-dinner drinks while they waited for Thor and Raine to join them. Janice had obviously gone to a lot of a trouble to compete with the girl she had once written off as a nonentity; her body was fitted snugly as a dagger into a sheaf of stiff black grosgrain that left marble shoulders bare and drew immediate attention to blonde hair coiled into an intricate coronet.

  Against Raine's fresh young beauty, however, she appeared stiffly formal, and the suspicion that she was overdressed for the small family gathering did nothing to sweeten her temper. Predictably, it was Thor who drew her fire, his dancing eyes and humour-quirked mouth drawing her venom.

  'Ah, Prince Charming 1 What changes you have wrought in him, my dear Raine—don't tell me mere kisses changed the frog into a prince—or am I getting my fairy tales a trifle mixed?'

  'It happens,' Thor returned easily. 'I find it difficult myself to dissociate the ugly sister from whichever character it was whose every spoken word came out as a writhing sake.' Urbanely, he poured out drinks, then sauntered across to Raine, calming her anxiety with a conspiratorial grin.

  Britt frowned his wife to silence before addressing a peeved request to his brother. 'If ever again you intend disappearing for the day you might let us know so that arrangements can be made for someone to take charge of Vulcan. It was a bit much,' he blustered, 'your calmly walking out and leaving us to cope with an unruly brat whose behaviour was, to say the least, diabolical!'

  Thor's eyebrows shot up. 'We thought we were doing you a favour! Didn't you say you intended to .become better acquainted with your son?'

  'Well, yes…' Britt seemed nonplussed by the reminder. His feathers had been ruffled as never before by his wayward son and already he was regretting giving in to his wife's spurious impulse to claim the child they hardly knew. 'But gradually. I refuse to be pitch-forked into fatherhood———'

  'As I was!' Thor's head tilted. 'How very sensible of you!'

  Resentment seethed between the two men—so physically alike yet so basically different. Britt, who up until then had had everything his own way, seemed unable to grasp that the charm that had eased his path through life was no longer working upon the brother who had resigned himself from childhood to being an also ran; a colourless reflection of his flamboyant twin.

  Raine felt unbearably agitated, violence was heaving beneath the surface, an explosive force seeking the relief of one tiny spark. Then the crack of splintering glass shattered the silence and, dumbly she stared at the spread of wine across the floor, unaware that the glass was hers, crushed by tense fingers. Thor spun round with a muttered curse. Swiftly he crossed to her side and grasped her shaking hands in his huge fist, speaking gently to soothe away the tension caused by fear.

  'Don't worry,’ he urged, 'nothing is about to erupt, I promise you.'

  Even in the midst of turmoil she was conscious of Janice's sharp glance and the question that rapped across the room was a warning to them both that her curiosity was aroused.

  'In which part of Ireland did you live, Raine—I don't believe the exact location was ever established?' For an infinitesimal second a picture flashed across her mind, a cameo of rolling hills swathed in mist, a large red-brick house surrounded by fields in which horses and cattle grazed contentedly upon grass that was vividly green…

  'In Belfast,' Thor supplied briefly.

  Just in time, she stopped herself from contradicting.

  But Janice seemed to have lost interest. 'How dreadful for you!' she shuddered. 'I'm not surprised your parents are in no hurry to return.'

  Dinner was a ritual suffered for the most part in silence. Raine toyed with the food on her plate, still preoccupied with the flash of memory that had yielded a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been her home or what could merely have been an unconnected image, the sort any mind might fasten upon at the mention of Ireland. When she pushed away her untouched plate Thor caught her eye and smiled. Tremulously the corners of her mouth lifted and the action seemed to propel him into a sudden decision. He stood up to walk behind her, and with his hands resting on the back of her chair politely asked Britt and Janice to excuse them both.

  'It's been a long day for both of us. Raine is tired and obviously not hungry,’ so if you don't mind, we'll leave you to finish dinner alone. By the way,' he flung across his shoulder when they reached the door, 'we shall be out all day tomorrow. We'll take Vulcan with us, but one or both of you will have to look after him during the evening as Raine and I will be dining out.'

  Britt's look of affront was so marked it was an effort to remain straight-faced until the door had closed behind them, but once they were alone Raine, encouraged by Thor's wide grin, gave way to stifled laughter.

  'What shall we do now?' she gurgled. 'I enjoyed the grand exit, but it's still a little early for bed.'

  'I know of something that might interest you— come with me.'

  Obediently she followed him along a passageway until they reached a door of solid oak hung on heavy iron hinges with a lock that squealed a protest when Thor turned the huge key he unearthed from its hiding place. 'No one ever comes in here but me,' he explained, closing the door behind them as if-relieved to break contact with the outside world. 'This is my escape hole, once inside I can lose myself in my hobby and forget all frustrations.'

  Feeling very much aware of the honour bestowed, Raine waited while he groped his way through pitch black darkness, then after the scraping of a match an oil lamp flooded light on to the bare stone walls of what had originally been a cellar, now converted .into a workshop with lathes and workbenches littered with drills and miscellaneous tools. When she stepped forward Thor pointed to a pile of brown-coloured stones heaped upon the workbench. 'That is the material I work with, can you guess what it is?'

  Gingerly, she ran her finger along a sharp edge. 'Flint… ?' she ventured.

  He shook his head. 'First let me show you some of the finished products, then you'll be better able to guess.' Out of a drawer he pulled a box, an old-fashioned jewellery case, its leather covering tattered with age. Inside, red velvet lining looking as good as new afforded a perfect backcloth for jewellery fashioned out of glittering black stone. He lifted out a necklace of intricately carved beads supporting a diamond-cut pendant and Raine accepted it wordlessly, unable to associate work of such delicacy with the man who had freely confessed to being awkward and clumsy.

  'You made this?' she breathed, entranced by the sparkling black gems. 'But what is the connection between this necklace and that pile of stones?'

  'Jet,' he corrected. 'Those stones are just as they were when they were picked up from the beach, all that's needed is cutting and polishing to bring out their true colour.'

  Ticked up from the beach? You mean the jet is just lying there waiting to be picked up by anyone?

  'Anyone who can recognize it as such,' he confirmed. 'Unfortunately quite a lot of tourists are exploited by u
nscrupulous locals who sell lumps of coal as genuine jet. All that glisters———' he shrugged. 'You know the rest.'

  Raine glanced from the pile of dull stones to the beautifully finished necklace and sensed he was comparing himself with Britt—to his own detriment.

  'How clever you are, Thor! Transforming mediocrity into beauty is a talent you possess in abundance—as I ought to know.' She pirouetted in her new dress, making her meaning obvious.

  Hard fingers bit into her arm, spinning her round so that she was forced to meet eyes of glittering green. 'Elfin blue eyes, hair black as a pixie's and a mouth an angel might envy could never be considered mediocre 1 You're as unique as this jet,' he brooded down, 'and as beneficial to all who need your help.' She trembled; although the cellar was unheated her body felt feverish. Mistaking the tremor for fear, he released her and swung away with the matter-of-fact observation, 'There are many superstitions connected with jet. Once it was used as a means of warding off the evil eye. It was also reputed to cure dropsy, epilepsy> snakebite and the pains of childbirth, but the most remarkable claim ever recorded,' his shadow loomed back out of the darkness, 'is that it has the power to erase the agony of "virgin purity by lust defiled".'

  She stiffened, disturbed by the mockery of his words. She could not understand his unpredictable changes of mood, one minute morose, the next deliberately provoking. Black-browed displeasure she could cope with, but these flashes of teasing charm left her feeling unbearably buffeted. Was he practising again?

  She edged away, hiding her nervousness behind a flippant reply. 'Fortunately, I'm not likely to suffer .from any of those ailments—especially not the latter, so—-in my case—the use of jet as a talisman could hardly be justified.'

  'How. can you be sure?' Carelessly he played with her emotions. 'You're fully aware of my needs.'

  'I am sure!' She twirled away, her heart thumping, resenting the ease with, which he could set her pulses racing-

  His short laugh put an end to the verbal dalliance. Taking pity on her confusion, he fell back upon the mundane. 'These tools are not unlike those used by prehistoric jet workers, varied a little in shape, perhaps, but still basically similar.'

  'How… how do you make the holes through the beads?' She grasped the subject gratefully.

  'With this.' He chose a drill from the collection littering his workbench. 'Force would shatter the jet to pieces,^ and burning a way through would be equally disastrous. One needs to know about the nature of rough jet from the start—where the spar begins and ends, how the seam runs—without that knowledge the resulting piece would show flaws and lack the clear, bright surface some people liken to black amber.'

  'Sea amber!' Her imagination was fired.

  'Not quite,' he corrected with a smile. 'It has been established that jet is really driftwood which has been subjected to chemical action in stagnant water, then afterwards flattened by enormous pressure. So it's in the cliffs that consist of layers of shale and rock and solidified mud of an ancient sea where the jet is found. The stones found on the beach are mostly chippings from fallen rock and are not, as you would like to believe, jewels washed up from the sea.'

  'I see.' She was disappointed. 'So jet can actually be mined?'

  'And was for many years,' he nodded. 'At one time, the industry flourished around these parts, keeping many men employed. Unfortunately, the demand for jet diminished, then faded almost completely. Only one of the genuine old craftsmen still survives, and it was he who taught me the necessary skills.'

  'So where do you get your jet?' she demanded, utterly absorbed.

  ‘I’ll show you tomorrow,' he promised. 'There's a cove along the coast which in the past has yielded quite generous, amounts from cliff falls, but the easiest pieces to work are those that are washed and rounded by the action of the sea scouring them among the sand and shingle of the shore. Even when one knows what to look for they're not easy to find. Still, with your help, and Vulcan's, I should reap quite a good haul. We might even find the time to visit Tommy Tose—the old jet carver I mentioned. These days, he's too unsteady on his pins to get down to the beach, but as he likes to "keep his hand in" he's always grateful for a supply of rough jet.'

  'I would like that.' Interest in a glass-fronted cabinet tucked away in a corner was responsible for her absent reply. She gravitated towards it, drawn instinctively by a tantalizing glimpse of the unusual. 'May I…" She awaited permission to pry and was rewarded by a nod. Carefully she maneuvered open the door to examine the contents of the dusty shelves.

  'Oh, Thor!' Her cry held admiration and reproof. On the shelves, in jumbled disarray, were carvings of unique beauty veiled by cobwebs and dust. Casting him a look of resigned impatience, she grabbed a rag from the workbench and reached inside the cabinet to retrieve a miniature table carved from jet, its circular top daintily scalloped around the edges, an engraved stem splaying outwards into four paws with claws outspread. A matching tray holding two cut-jet decanters and tiny glasses delighted her and she succumbed to a childish urge to lift one of the miniature stoppers and pretend to pour wine into the doll-sized glasses.

  'Pray, good sir, may I offer you a drink?"

  'Thank you,' he accepted, a humorous quirk playing around his lips. With only two fingers he completely engulfed the small glass and the resulting comparison was so funny she collapsed into laughter. Ruefully, he grinned, acknowledging the joke against his huge hands and the contradictory fragility of the objects they had fashioned.

  Then suddenly her humour fled. A giant yearning over fragility no longer struck her as funny.

  She reached out to touch him, feeling an ache to communicate the sympathy that was making her heart swell. 'Such competent hands,' she murmured, spreading her fingers wide across his knuckles, 'yet so wonderfully artistic. You're a mass of contradictions, Thor, one moment ruthless, the next gentle; terrifying as a bellow, soothing as a whisper; a bruising grip healed by a soothing caress. Confusing, complex creature—never so strong than when you are gentle, never so gentle as When you are in a position of strength…'

  Swinging mere inches above his head, a lamp turned his red hair to copper. Beneath its beam they were trapped in a magic circle, silently exploring, each uncertain of the other's mind. As he studied her small, serious face a flame flared in the depths of his eyes, then was quickly extinguished, and as if at a painful reminder he flinched and broke the spell by moving away.

  'Your sweet tongue could change the direction of a elephant/ he grated, 'but you ought never to allow misguided sympathy to tempt you into potentially dangerous situations, otherwise you could be sorry —you might even have reason to resort to the much-disparaged powers ancients accorded to talismans of jet!'

  Fire raced into her cheeks. He was accusing her of flirting, and his words were a warning of what to expect from a man grown eager to hold a woman in his arms. She was a woman, but for practising purposes only I Miserable tears stung her eyes.

  'All I was trying to do,' she controlled a wayward sob, 'was show my admiration of your many talents. After all, not many men have the ability to run a farm, bring up a child single-handed, skipper a ship, engrave wonderful—-‘

  He interrupted her with an angry hiss. 'Sailors are taught to be resourceful, Miss Naive. But as they are also noted philanderers, do you think it was wise to try to tempt one of them into taking advantage?'

  'How dare you!' She forced a small flash of temper. 'In any case, how could I? You've said often enough how impossible you find women— you even asked me to teach you to feel at ease in their company, remember?'

  'I remember,' he countered inscrutably. 'And you're doing such an able job I find the exercise becoming easier by the minute!'

  CHAPTER TEN

  In order to reach the bay where .the jet was usually to be found,, they travelled a short distance across the moors to join. the coast road, then after a few miles they turned right, down a narrow dyke-lined lane leading directly to the sea. Raine was pointing out to Vulcan
the outline of a large ship just visible on the horizon when suddenly the ground seemed to drop from beneath them. They had ,breasted a rise, and instead of continuing straight the, road dipped at such an acute angle they seemed poised, high and precariously, on the edge of the world. She and Vulcan held their breath as Thor engaged low gear and began maneuvering the car forward. Below, the small crescent-shaped bay, its houses clinging like nests along protective cliffs, could have been a toy town viewed by air and the solidly substantial Range Rover an, aircraft winging a cautious way down the line of cliff in search of a landing place.

  No one spoke until Thor swung the car into a car park placed strategically at the bottom of., the hill to eliminate the very real danger of cars nose-diving into the sea. 'Whew! That was super, Uncle Thor, can we do it again…?'

  'Were you afraid? Thor questioned, his eyes on Raine. 'I could have warned you, but I decided it would be a shame to spoil the excitement of a first descent. Did I do wrong?'

  She marshalled her scattered wits and gasped, 'I don't think I've ever flown, but I imagine the sensation must be similar. I thought at first we'd gone straight over the edge of the cliff,' she admitted shakily, 'it hardly seemed possible for the car to remain on the road.'

  Vulcan shot off towards the cliffs while she waited until Thor had secured- the car. They had parked practically on the beach, so the houses and shops that comprised the small village were behind them, rising in tiers up the cliff side, connected by steep flights of steps or cobbled paths, some of them with handrails to assist the ascent.

  'You don't have to be a mountain goat to live here, but it helps,' Thor quipped to Raine, reminded of an amazed pygmy surveying Everest. 'Tommy Tose's cottage is perched almost on the cliff top, but I promise you the ascent isn't half so formidable as it looks. However, you can judge for yourself later, after we've found our jet.'